This invention relates to video systems, and more particularly, to filtering out certain events from videos in real time.
Television viewing is a common leisure time activity. Families gather nightly to watch their favorite programs. Pay-per-view movies and videocassette rentals are also popular sources of videos for family viewing.
A concern of many parents is that their children are exposed to too much sexually related and violent material. Although many television programs and movies are rated by industry associations, such ratings are of limited usefulness. Many potentially objectionable events occur in a given program or movie and the objectionable nature of the events varies from event to event. Nevertheless, at most a single rating is provided for each program or movie. As a result, some programs and movies may be given less mature ratings than they deserve, because the sexual or violent content of a relatively small number of events may be overlooked by a ratings association. Other programs and movies may be given more mature ratings than they deserve.
This situation presents parents with a dilemma. If a parent limits a child's viewing to only those works with age-appropriate ratings, the child may feel that the parent is being overly restrictive. If the parent allows the child to view works with more mature ratings, the child will probably be exposed to at least some content that the parent feels is inappropriate for their child.
Adults without children who are disturbed by the amount of sexually related and violent material that they are exposed to are faced with a similar problem. They can either forego viewing certain programs and movies based on subjective and potentially inaccurate ratings information or can be forced to tolerate objectionable events in the programs and movies that they view.
One proposal that addresses concerns about sex and violence on television is to use blocking circuitry (sometimes referred to as the V-chip) to selectively block televised programs based on ratings information. Televisions with such blocking circuitry could be configured to only display television programs with certain ratings. However, this type of system would still be subject to the problems associated with ratings systems that apply a single rating to each television program or movie. Blocking all television programs with mature ratings may be overly restrictive. Allowing programs with mature ratings to be displayed will expose viewers to potentially objectionable material.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a way in which to selectively filter out potentially objectionable events from television programs and videos.